Companies added 146,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent - the lowest in nearly four years - from 7.9 percent in October. The rate declined mainly because more people stopped looking for work and weren't counted as unemployed. — m.apnews.com

Among the specific industry sectors, professional services, healthcare, retail, leisure and hospitality, and construction all added jobs last month. The mining sector lost jobs. And employment in the rest of the economy—including manufacturing, financial services, government, information, and more—treaded water. — builderonline.com

The world is on the threshold of what might be called “peak people.” The world’s supply of working-age people will soon be shrinking, causing a shift from surplus to scarcity. As with “peak oil” theories — which hold that declining petroleum supplies will trigger global economic instability — the claims of the doomsayers are too hyperbolic and hysterical. These are not existential threats but rather policy challenges. That said, they’re very big policy challenges. — dougsaunders.net

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced that it had accepted an award from the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration’s Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) to promote the export of American architectural services to India and Sri Lanka. — aia.org

The evidence sits in my refrigerator: chevroned tall boys of Saison ale and a meticulous shortbread fruit tart, both crafted by former co-workers and classmates who initially pursued architecture only to search for fulfillment elsewhere. Photographers, typographers, bakers, bikers, and brewers are all disguised on LinkedIn and Facebook as design interns. There’s a renaissance happening among young architects — and it’s not in architecture. — crosscut.com

If you're unemployed, is it a good idea to turn down a job you don't like? Of course, no answer applies to everyone all the time. It depends on your situation and on the job. Financial distress is certainly a major factor in accepting an offer you don't like. Money should be secondary in career decisions, but if you're out of work and financially squeezed, you'd be an unusual person if you didn't rate the importance of money highly and accept a job you didn't like. — blogs.hbr.org

According to a new study led by Connie Wanberg, a University of Minnesota professor of organizational and work behavior, the average laid-off worker experiences a gradual improvement in mental health until the 10- to 12-week mark, when the trend reverses.

The study found that those participants who reported better mental health tended to conduct more intense job searches, increasing their likelihood of landing jobs. — online.wsj.com

The study used a scientific technique called “eye tracking” on 30 professional recruiters and examined their eye movements during a 10-week period to "record and analyze where and how long someone focuses when digesting a piece of information or completing a task.

...the study showed recruiters will look at your name, current title and company, current position start and end dates, previous title and company, previous position start and end dates, and education. — businessinsider.com

There is randomness in job searches. Not every step will be successful. It's easier said than done, but here are three ways to build resilience: — Harvard Business Review

If we’re going to find jobs in the U.S. and the rest of the world, they’re going to have to be found in exactly the area where China is finding them — tertiary industry, or services.

How do you create service-industry jobs? By investing in cities and inter-city infrastructure like smart grids and high-speed rail. Services flourish where people are close together and can interact easily with the maximum number of people. If we want to create jobs in America, we should look to services... — blogs.reuters.com

Recent college graduates with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture experienced significantly higher rates of joblessness, according to a study being released Wednesday by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

Among recent college graduates, those with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), according to the study. — washingtonpost.com

High joblessness and the weak economic recovery pushed the ranks of the poor in the U.S. to 46.2 million in 2010 -- the fourth straight increase and the largest number of people living in poverty since record-keeping began 52 years ago, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. — LA Times

How great are the benefits of density? Economists studying cities routinely find that after controlling for other variables, workers in denser places earn higher wages and are more productive. Some studies suggest that doubling density raises productivity by around 6 percent while others peg the impact at up to 28 percent. — nytimes.com

Steve Jobs has the right name for what's missing in America's economy. Does he also represent the way back to prosperity? We look at his record at Apple and its influence in the US and around the world. — kcrw.com

As the third anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers approaches — the event that delivered the knockout punch to an already reeling U.S. economy — a trend is emerging that may have once seemed unthinkable. Firms are hiring again. — Architectural Record